Fighting Identity Systems

Reports and Analysis

Long Read

Digital National ID systems: Ways, shapes and forms

PI has put together an analysis of some of the most used Foundational ID systems worldwide.

Report

A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems: The Right to Privacy and National Identity Systems

This section lays out the wide range of arguments challenging identity systems because of their impact on the right to privacy.

Report

A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems: Paths forward

This section discusses identity systems’ implications for the rule of law, the role of international human rights law, and considerations of gender identity, which are often absent from existing jurisprudence.

Report

A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems: Impact of identity systems on rights other than privacy

This section sets out arguments on rights other than privacy, namely liberty, dignity, and equality. It provides detail on the social and economic exclusion and discrimination that can result from the design or implementation of identity systems.

Report

A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems: Data Protection and National Identity Systems

This section presents arguments on data protection concerns, highlighting the importance of safeguards to protect rights, and pointing to issues around the role of consent, function creep, and data sharing.

Report

A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems: Biometrics

The following section of this guide provides details on these arguments surrounding biometric information which is often an important component of most identity systems.

Report

A Guide to Litigating Identity Systems: An introduction

Many countries in the world have existing ID cards - of varying types and prevalence - there has been a new wave in recent years of state “digital identity” initiatives. The systems that states put in place to identify citizens and non-citizens bring with them a great deal of risks. This is

Long Read

Asylum-seekers and Coronavirus in the UK: risking life for status

The ongoing requirement for asylum-seekers to register their claim for asylum in person reveals the Home Office's misplaced and onerous emphasis on biometrics collection at the expense of asylum-seekers' health

Long Read

Timeline of SIM Card Registration Laws

IMAGE SOURCE: "My Phone Bought This" by oliver t is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. LAST UPDATE: 16th May 2022. Mandatory SIM card registration laws require people to provide personal information, including a valid ID or even their biometrics, as a condition for purchasing or activating a SIM card

Report

Fintech: Privacy and Identity In the New Data-Intensive Financial Sector

Financial services are changing, with technology being a key driver. It is affecting the nature of financial services, from credit and lending through to insurance, and even the future of money itself. The field of fintech is where the attention and investment is flowing. Within it, new sources of

Report

Aiding Surveillance

Information technology transfer is increasingly a crucial element of development and humanitarian aid initiatives: social protection programmes are incorporating digitised Management Information Systems and electronic transfers, registration and electoral systems are deploying biometric technologies

Report

United Kingdom Identity Cards and Social Exclusion

This report investigates the probable effect of the proposed UK national Identity Card system on people who are marginalised, who suffer social disadvantage or exclusion, and those who are disabled. The work focuses on the biometrics element of the government’s proposals (specifically facial

Report

Assessing Biometrics and Privacy and Touching Big Brother

The evolution of information technology is likely to result in intimate interdependence between humans and technology. This fusion has been characterized in popular science fiction as chip implantation. It is, however, more likely to take the form of biometric identification using such technologies

Report

On Campaigns of Opposition to ID Card Schemes

Proposals for identity (ID) cards have provoked public outrage and political division in several countries. In this paper Simon Davies analyses the key elements of public opposition to ID Card schemes, and profiles the massive 1987 Australian campaign against a national ID card.